The Regulon 269
Can modern media be killed? Does information have any natural predators? Or will it grow exponentially, forever, until it approaches the Omega Point -- the computer-science fatalist theory that continued rapid change eventually leads to something that dramatically transforms the fundamental situation of people in the universe. Is there any way -- natural, electronic or organic -- to stop information from proliferating?
The answer from New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, who fled the States for Paris, in part, so his child could get a respite from the American information explosion, is a firm No. In this age, media defy natural laws of the survival of species. Lots of information languishes, is ignored, or ends up stranded in dead links and ghost sites, but it only seems to replicate.
In his engaging book Paris To The Moon, Gopnik describes a visit to an intellectual salon where an economist lectured on exponentiality.
"Exponentiality is fatality," the economist announced, explaining that the exponential proliferation of biological life -- each codfish has a million offspring; each young codfish has a million of its own -- means that the codfish, or slime mold or antelope, would cover the earth unless something stopped it.
"Therefore," Gopnik quotes the economist as saying, "there must exist in the biological sphere a principle, which I will call the Regulon, which prevents this from happening."
Gopnik wisely points out that Darwin pretty much covered this ground. Predators will eat most of the codfish. Most of the remainder die. Life is hard, and members of many species don't make it.
But I remained fixated on the idea that there is no Regulon in the Semiosphere, no natural barrier to the endless flow and reproduction of electronic information. We have no way to keep CNN, weatherman, flamers, spammers, Web site designers, e-do gooders and nit-picking coders, pundits, zealots, smart-asses and grumps in check. Each is breeding information and media. We can't stem or steer the natural proliferation of movies, TV shows, books, songs, poems, pitches, spins, videogames, junk mail, ads, Washington talk shows and radio hosts.
The global economy remains a chimera. It's really much more about the flow of information than of goods. It's information that's being globalized, at least within the English-speaking world, information that's proliferating at a rate that suggests that media are not subject to Darwin's theories. Information can't be killed or curbed unless you want to live like the Unabomber.
The early hackers opened a Pandora's Box by proclaiming that information wants to be free. Increasingly it is free, but nobody dreamed there would be so much of it, spreading so wildly. Look at media coverage of sensational stories -- like the death of Princess Di, the O.J. Simpson trial, the Monica Lewinsky mess or the recent electoral nightmare. In the absence of a Regulon, information could proliferate to the point that it overwhelms us. Picture a world in which all those codfish live.
With so many Web sites, Web logs, mailing lists, networks, magazines, instant messages, conferences, shows, gasbags, lobbyists, experts, scholars, junk mail and politicians bombarding us that we really have no idea what might or might not be true. The public is beseiged to the point of stalemate, a possible explanation of the dead tie in the presidential election. In the absence of natural selection, information spreads. And spreads.
Media seem to live apart even from accepted business rules. Companies like Disney, Microsoft and G.E. all want to own and make media sites -- Slate, CNN, ABC News, MSN, MSNBC -- even if they aren't profitable and have no chance of ever succeeding, viewing them as synergistic economic necessities. So the sites aren't subject to the economic or social versions of laws that govern biological species like the codfish. It no longer seems to even matter if they have readers or how many. This isn't to say that all media is consumed or successful. There are now a billion Web sites out there. How many have you been on? And dead links are everywhere in cyberspace. Still, they aren't technically dead, just dormant.
This suggests that information is creating its own eco-system, a meme-driven, self-replicating technology that won't quit and can't be killed.
Or can it? Gopnik says you can kill some of it by pulling plugs, but in an increasingly wireless world, that may not be an option for long. Can anything destroy it? Will it self-destruct naturally? Maybe not. As the Net continues to decentralize -- Open Source, freenet, Gnutella, P2P, Napster -- it seems inevitable that media will also continue to grow, exponentially at an even faster rate. Everybody who makes it to the Net or the Web can produce information, pass it along and replicate it, share music, video and text files; create Web pages; open e-mail and other accounts; join mailing lists and Web logs, store material. And that's with only half of Americans having access to computers, and a fraction of the rest of the world's population. The number of people generating their own information will multiply in coming years, while the people already generating information will simply be producing more of it?
Governments, potentially, could seek to censor the Net and reverse the free flow of information. But none has yet emerged that seems up to the task technologically, even if they like the idea ideologically. Certainly the miserable efforts of the U.S. Congress to pass Communications Decency Acts failed spectacularly.
Corporations have a better shot at curbing information, but they have no motive to do so. Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner, along with the music companies have the legal ability and access to technical resources. But they want to make more information and they want to profit from its spread, especially once they figure out how to charge for it, as Bertelsmann is trying to do with Napster. And they are increasingly dependent in information for their own business operations.
As for traditional institutions like religion, academe, law enforcement and politics, they haven't got a prayer at keeping up. The teenagers writing code are light years ahead of them when it comes to creating and circumventing new information technologies. No member of the clergy or school principal can reverse the trend, and most parents have quit trying. They know their kids need computers to survive in the world; they know they can't control them once they turn the machines on. Apart from some pathetic efforts with blocking and filtering software, adults mostly cross their fingers and hope the young are headed somewhere healthy.
Concludes Gopnik: "There is No Regulon in the Semiosphere is a wildly abstract way of saying that there is no 'natural predator' to stop the proliferation" of media. They do and will, he suggests, overwhelm the world, and with it reality.
"It is hard to see how you save the carousel and the musical horse in a world of video games not because the carousel and musical horse are less attractive to children than the Game Boy, but because the carousel and the musical horse are single things in one fixed place and the video games are everywhere, no Regulon to eat them up."
I beg to differ.... (Score:3)
Where do you think the MPAA and RIAA come in? Certaintly not an advocate of the proliferation of electronic information...
Egads... (Score:3)
Hold on... I'm having an epiphany here... Feels like a deep one...
Yes! That's it! That's the reason! Media are not species, and thus are not bound by the laws governing organisms! Wow! Jon Katz has led me to the mountaintop yet again...
OK,
- B
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Information *IS* Darwinian (Score:1)
If someone puts forth an idea or some information and others find it interesting or at the least entertaining, it flurishes and spreads. Eventually, as with everything else, it fades into history.
If an idea is unpopular or nobody cares, it dies and is forgotten about, sometimes forever.
Information is Darwinian in the fact that the strong (popular) ideas survive, and the weak (unpopular) ones die off.
Some information will live until the end of time, some may be forgotten quickly, and some may never be revealed at all but each will flurish due to how many people agree/disagree or care/don't care about it.
Re:I beg to differ.... (Score:1)
There is no grammar, is a theory. (Score:1)
And some help from an English teacher as well, I fear.
Virusses (Score:1)
People who write virus killers should be prosecuted for endangering the human species. The noble virus must not be hindered to complete it's task of being the predator on the information monster, killing it by saying "I love you, Melissa!" This show of affection will surely demolish the pure evil that is information.
I'm glad somebody set this straight.
Darwinism is universal! (Score:1)
Universal darwinism is Universal... but it
doesn't prevent the formation of ESS (Evolutionary
stable systems). You guyz should start reading
ethology books again before making stupid
affirmation.
Human Condition... (Score:3)
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm sure some predator would have taken me down in high school. But isn't Katz kind of missing the point by trying to apply biological anologies to an abstract entitity when it doesn't even apply to the biologicals that created the abstract concept?
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Gonzo Granzeau
Information is subject to entropy (Score:2)
Call an apple an apple... (Score:1)
Just a few thoughts
Extended analogies (Score:1)
Thus you can only Assume (Score:1)
Re:Information *IS* Darwinian (Score:1)
Huh? (Score:1)
Yes, we do. The crap sinks to the bottom. It's like the way that google.com works: important things are most likely linked to from other sites. The more links, the more important. Or by the number of successful search queries.
One can post thier views, information, etc on the internet, but if its not noteworthy, it won't draw attention. Natural selection exsists on the net. And on
Like this Katz article. I'm sorry, but this time Katz hasn't pushed my thinking anywhere.
Dirk
Regulons... (Score:1)
If a form of media is not popular, i.e. does not make money, it will die.
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If you don't like information, don't seek it (Score:3)
However, the author's rant seems to be nonsensical. You cannot apply Darwin's theories to non-organic things. Information does not reproduce by itself, it does not compete with us for food, and it doesnt even take up that much space. I can go buy a 60 Gb hard drive, and I can fit an enormous amount of information in the physical space that a hamstar would take up. Guess what else? I can format the sucker if it gets too full. In the parlance of this article, this would be equivalent to dropping an A-bomb on aa rainforest ecosystem.
Data exists at our whim, we can do what we want with it. If you are feeling overloaded by it, turn off your computer.
My Battle with Infinite Information (Score:5)
When I go home at night, I have to perform a careful balancing act, like most technically minded people with real lives I would guess, to do a little surfing, read a little news. Watch a little anime that I've downloaded from Alt.binaries.multimedia.anime. Then I do something that does *not* involve the rest of the world or the internet. I spend time with my wife. I play a game. I read a real, print book. I write or draw. I spend time working on my 3d artwork [furinkan.net].
I discard over 99% of the information available to me, and refuse to let it take away the kind of life I want to live. The information that I'm not interested in simply dies with me. It doesn't get passed on to anyone I know or reproduced on my website for general consumption. It has 6 billion other ways to procreate, but will not do so through me.
Predators (Score:1)
No Darwinian pressures? Bah! (Score:1)
Re:Human Condition... (Score:1)
why do you think we mate the way we do? trying to find the "best mate" for our offspring?
and those who can not find a suitable mate, have their genes removed from the gene pool... perfect natural selection...
tagline
Re:Darwinism is universal! (Score:1)
Apples and eyeballs (Score:2)
You are forgetting the input part of the equation. Humands need Apples, media needs eyeballs. Without the eyeballs they die.
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Brave New World may come true yet (Score:1)
Free Information has nothing to do with the media (Score:1)
The problem most people have with media is that it's just the opposite; the media want to control the flow of information, not make it available. And that's why the success of media has nothing to do with the success of dispersing information. Like any other powerful group of corporations, their object is to completely control their product. It's just our sense of information being more of a basic right than material goods that makes them seem to be different (and more evil, to most /.'ers).
Businesses don't have predators so much -- they have competitors, and have to fight for public interest. The media is no exception. They don't deserve any different treatment or regard than we give any other company.
Re:Darwinism is universal! (Score:2)
If only everybody would agree to be a dove, every single individual would benefit. By simple group selection, any group in which all
individuals mutually agree to be doves would be far more successful than a rival group sitting at the ESS (Evolutionary Stable Strategy)
ratio.... Group selection theory would therefore predict a tendency to evolve towards an all-dove conspiracy... But the trouble with
conspiracies, even those that are to everybody's advantage in the long run, is that they are open to abuse. It is true that everybody does
better in an all-dove group than he would in an ESS group. But unfortunately, in conspiracies of doves, a single hawk does so extremely
well that nothing could stop the evolution of hawks. The conspiracy is therefore bound to be broken by treachery from within. An ESS is
stable, not because it is particularly good for the individuals participating in it, but simply because it is immune to treachery from within.
Re:Information *IS* Darwinian (Score:1)
Since it's a titalating story, and certainly could be true, you remember it and perhaps even tell a couple of friends about it.
And the cycle begins again, keeping the idea fresh and strong.
If you want more information on information, ideas and how they spread, look for information on "memes" (meme on Dictionary.com [dictionary.com])
$$ (Score:1)
Cost is the Regulon (Score:1)
Yes, Jon, there is a "regulon" (what a lame neologism)
Because the "semiosphere" (just like "cyberspace") is just another BS idea. In reality, ideas must have some physical expression in order to be tranmitted to human beings. Whether that physical expression is space on a server and the cost of bandwidth, or a printed page, ultimately doesn't make much difference.
It actually costs money to serve web pages, show infomercials, and publish information. It may have seemed like there was unlimited funding for such intellectual trash during the dotcom boom, but now, such venture funding is drying up fast.
Only those bits of information for which someone is willing to *pay* will survive, because people won't spend money on publishing information if they're not getting anything back for that cost.
So, yes Jon, there is a "regulon" - the "regulon" is cost.
Muddle minded generalizations, bah (Score:2)
What Katz fails to do is establish any reason or need for regulating the flood of information. Is the fact that within the next 25 years I will be able to access the sum total of human knowledge within an instant of thinking of it somehow bad? It's not like this information is crushing in on me. Web sites don't just pop up in my browser unbidden (at least most don't
Katz's 'semiosphere' metaphor is weak at best, ludicrous more like. The biological world is finite, habits are limited in capacity, animals die, reproduce recombinantly. None of these features is present in the realm of information. Or capacity to store information grows exponentially every year. Information does not reproduce, and there is no natural limit to the amount of information we can store. There does not need to be a 'regulon'.
And as always, I utterly failed to find any sort of a point in this little fluff piece. Reading stuff like this really makes me think that I, with my relatively poor writing skills and reasoning abilities could be a pundit. I'd couldn't be worse than Jon.
-josh
Re:Information *IS* Darwinian (Score:1)
Moreover I think that 'Modern media' DOES HAVE predators. An idea that negates, contradicts or argues against another can 'kill' it.
Idea's can also merge and 'breed' newer ideas.
Re:I beg to differ.... (Score:2)
forget media what about humans? (Score:1)
huh? (Score:3)
Its a good thing because if the size of Katz's articles got exponentially big, they would now be in the Terrabyte range....
Re:Information *IS* Darwinian (Score:3)
Self regulation (Score:3)
Turn off the computer.
Turn off the TV.
Turn off the radio.
Turn off the cell phone.
There, you're the "Regulon". Isn't free will marvelous?
Oh wait: you had these things on because you liked them! Well, then there isn't a problem, is there?
Re:Human Condition... (Score:2)
Does anybody disagree that this is inherently a Bad Thing? That a very few, construct reality for the very many? That these very few have ulterior motives in doing so? TV, radio, the internet, for the most part is a vast wasteland of fluff and marketing tripe, dictating the world around you. Do you also blindly believe everything in your history textbook? Remember, those who win, either historically or economically, get to tell the story they want.
Come on... this guy is a space monkey (Score:2)
The theory of evolution can ONLY be applied to biological phenomena, because it relies on a positive-feedback mechanism that works at the level of human DNA.
Expecting it to apply to "information" or "culture" or any other "social" (non-biological) phenomena is just plain stupid. There is no identifiable feedback mechanism.
Anyone who considers this insightful should probably build themselves a giant bomb-shelter and stock it full of cheap cybernetic fiction... all the better to shelter themselves from the H-bomb of 'information-overload' their systems just can't take.
Somewhere in the world... (Score:2)
Somewhere in the world, a dot.com is going under. I do not know the dot.com or the information they produced, but they are going under nonetheless.
Somewhere in the world, a grandmother is creating a web page of her grandchildren's pictures. I do not know the grandmother or her grandchildren, and I will never visit her web page, but the page is created nonetheless.
Just because something is happening somewhere in the world doesn't mean I have to be cognizant of it. The Net gives us the ability to be cognizant of everything. Having the ability to do something is not a requirement that it be done.
At the heyday of the industrial age, people moving from remote farms to the city would be overwhelmed by all the noise and 'hustl-n-bustle'. People who had grown up in the city were quite used to the noise and activity, and subconsciously filtered it all out.
The internet is the new city. Those who spend time here learn to filter the noise to the point where it isn't even noticed. Newbies come and feel that they must read every word of every article. They must know the city as well as they knew their farmstead. The gurus out there know that you ignore everything except what is important to you.
As for exponential growth being fatality, the argument is that as a species grow larger than the ability of the environment to support them, the species will die out. But I pose the question, what happens when the environment is growing exponentially, say along the lines of Moore's Law?
Information has MANY enemies (Score:2)
The fact of the matter is that information on the internet is not inherently longer lived or less subject to "predation" than information in any other source. The main problem with "information overload" on the internet at present is due to the lack of high quality indexes. "Portal sites" mostly follow the method of Yahoo, i.e. a large collection of categorized links with very little descriptive information and no rankings as to the "quality" of the site in question. Eventually, such things will improve, making it easier to find the "good stuff" and ignore the "bad stuff". Personally, even know I find that there isn't nearly as much stuff on the Internet as I'd like, there are huge chasms of information missing that I am interested in (and I'm sure I'm not alone here). No, the internet isn't some fabulously new phenomenon that will destroy our brains because there's so much information on it.
Also, did anyone else think that the writer of this article was being a little uhhh pretentious maybe? Using big words and 1337 post modern philosophy jargon to make the article sound more profound?
Hey! Made-up-word violation! (Score:2)
Can I just point out that the English language is complex enough without pretentious journalists adding words exponenetially? Where is the regulation? If we keep adding all these words at this rate in a few decades the English language will end up being some kind of incomprehensable dribble. French will seem sensible by comparison! Please stope adding new words. Think of the non-english speaking minorities that have to learn all the new words! Please won't someone think of the children!
It's about advertising, eh? (Score:2)
Eventually we'll run out of space for billboards. There are only 24 hours in the day to run ads on television and radio.
A webpage is essensially a billboard you can create out of mid-air. One page can house dozens of 'advertising' links or promotions, and it doesn't take up any space in our physical world.
The danger is that there is no reason to not show more advertising. If Disney shows 20,000,000 ads this year, and you're Fox, you are essentially forced to show 20,500,000 ads. Then Disney goes to 30,000,000 ads. A company running a branding campaign's mission is simply to show you their name/logo more ofte than The Other Guy (tm). Product quality is almost a moot point now. Virtually any corperation can create a soft-drink that tastes nice or an animated feature that you kids beg you to go see. So you just have to make sure you're on the top of the list in the person's head when they think about that soft-drink to drink or what movie to see or what toy to purchase. There's no reason to scale back, if you own the 'billboard' and it costs you a fixed value per year. There is absolutely nothing in the capitalist model that encourages scaling back on 'brand'-style campaigns. If you can just add another web page and find some way to make people come to it, then you've essentially side-stepped the physical limitations of advertising. And it's advertising that's keeping the internet alive; believe it.
If something has never been said/seen/heard before, best stop to think about why that is.
Time is the information predator (Score:2)
Consider:
With these points in mind, actually keeping hold of relevant points becomes the effort, and as such, more and more effort is being put into identifying strongly significant data and rejecting the less significant, allowing it to slowly degrade, or perchance to be maintained by small groups for who the data is actually relevant.
All systems have a level of complexity (the lambda value, if memory serves me correctly), where the level of complexity is balanced between order and chaos sufficient to produce a stable, yet flexible entity.
If the constraints are placed on this system (lawyers, corporations, patents etc) in excess, then the system will die, due to being able to change sufficiently to progress to the next required state.
If the signal to noise ratio goes too low (Spam, spurious sites, too many sites with too little content become prominent) then again, the system will atrophy due to not being able to provide any valid information.
The internet, as I see it, is already a living entity. And as such, has it's own protection systems in place. As I see them, these are:
This will entail the net becoming more like as of old. Academic, and the exchange of ideas. Again, a strong signal with little background noise.
All the above take is just a little time.. Which is proving to be the great leveller of all things.
Just my tuppence worth,
Malk
So what? (Score:2)
Eventually the amount of information in the world will reach a critical mass where there is so much noise in it all that people will just ignore the vast majority of it. I would suggest that this is already the case in fact.
Think about it, in the vast space that is the Internet, how much of it do you use on a routine basis? How much of it is actually useful to you in some fashion? Yet it keeps growing, so it just means that you're ignoring more of it which really puts very little strain on you.
Now, you might think that eventually we come to a problem where, because of all the noise, we have trouble finding things. This is not a problem either. Think about it, how do you find information now? You go to sites that have traditionally provided you with relavent search results or you talk to friends and ask them. You use filters to limit that vast amount of information into a more managable form.
Now, as for the media, those who produce information (to define it very loosely), they are in fact limited in how much they can grow. There's only so much information that people can actually consume. Increasingly we see competition for people's attention between TV, Internet, Radio, Books, etc. Only so much of your day can be reasonably spent on gathering information so the market for these services is limited. So, they must compete with eachother to provide, not just MORE content, but more USEFUL content.
As the media have tried to expand the number of hours that the average persons spends consuming media, people have show greater interest in getting "off-line". This is a strong indication that the fundamental limits of time people are willing to commit to media consumption are being reached now.
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What's wrong with information? (Score:2)
As it was, it is now, and always shall be.
I really don't see what the problem is here...
If a slime mold covers up the world, it's bad because everything else dies, incapable of receiving light. That's really bad.
But information (in itself) isn't harming people.
So, I'm going to give Jon Katz the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is joining the party of Internet intellectuals (such as the recently mentioned Caleb Carr [salon.com]), that is fond of saying, "People are getting information, but they aren't forming a framework out of that information." (Caleb's solution was to put a "truth rating" on every web tidbit...)
It is true; If you are into the advancement of mind, this is indeed a great obstacle. But I don't think it's a new thing. Perhaps I should complain, "People are learning things on the net, but they aren't learning that these are things that have always been true, and will be true in the future."
Sometimes I read these Internet Pundits, and it just sounds like they are shouting this remarkably arrogant, "Just Get Smarter!"
People have lives, jobs, family, emotions, issues that they are sorting out, mystic quests and sagas, dramas, vengences, whatever. There's a lot more than just this mental churning going on out there. People don't necessarily want a coherent mental framework. Personally, I think it's really important, and a good thing. Consistency and clarity are nice. But I wouldn't go around saying, "Morasses of information are falling on these poor rubes who can't figure out how to seperate the wheat from the chaff [mit.edu]" as if the sky was falling.
A particularly odd post by JonKatz.
Beware of Sociologists bearing analogies. (Score:2)
Re:what the hell is a semiosphere? (Score:3)
To 'dumb it down' for you, regulon would be a regulating or restraining agent acting on media (in this example), and the semiosphere would be the medium through which the media travels.
Of course, I could be completely off base here, but considering that Katz is making this shit up as he goes along, anything I say can't be that bad in comparison.
And as a last rant against Katz, how the screaming hell does he get to post whatever he wants to when legitimate articles that actually make sense languish under rejection posts?
Good christ, if you want to talk something killing media and ideas, then it's Katz and other "journalists" like him.
Kierthos
Arg, er - info & energy (Score:2)
This supports my thesis that, altho there may be an economic slump at the moment, the upside potential going forward afterwards is tremendous - that is, the "latest and greatest" info systems of today and the near future are going to look quite primitive someday.
The future's so bright....
There is a predator (Score:3)
The only way content which should be weeded out remains is if the writer has been established as a popular content provider. For example, a unique look at school environments following the Columbine shooting could give a writer enough street cred to collect a check for months and months of useless drivel about the nature of "Open Media". However, if that writer does not produce anything worth reading or discussing long enough, people will eventually drift away.
If a writer pontificates on the web and it gets no no hits, is he really being published?
The Regulon would be... (Score:2)
If there were a Regulon in the Semiosphere, then all the reporters who once covered the OJ trial would be looking to get their old jobs back. I look at the OJ trial as a seminal event in the history of media. Much like the Watergate trial was, only the media are more savvy this time around. The OJ trial helped create a monster media force filled with 'gasbags' who created their own market.
But the Regulon in the Semiosphere would have to be the law of supply and demand, the market forces. The Internet now makes the free flow of information so cheap that the market forces are much much weaker. So the Regulon in the Semiosphere is just a weak force, allowing for a greater proliferation of information.
So, no, there will remain a proliferation of cheap media. But tell me, Jon, why is that a problem? I get the impression that you don't like it, and that's fine, we are all entitled to our opinion. But simply because one would prefer a different reality is not sufficient reason to change the one that exists naturally. Spamming is and should be illegal, as would, say, stock fraud, and some important forms of misinformation. But the principles of Freedom admit to the possibility of a cacophonous throng, and fairly embrace it.
I didn't really have anything to say, I just like saying "Regulon in the Semiosphere."
Re:Human Condition... (Score:2)
We have two aspects of human evolution, we have healthy, strong bodies, and we have the thing that differentiates us from animals, our brains. Now, should modern natural selection be based upon traditional standards, healthy bodies, strength, agility... Or will a factor of intelligence be more of a key, such as making more money, the ability to use power tools, the ability to use computers. And what mix is the best combination.
If you ask any 10 women who their perfect husband is, you'll get 10 different responses, with varying shades of these aspects. Not all will choose Mel Gibson. You ask 10 men however, you'll get answers only a few answers based on the first aspect of health and vigor. Interesting thought, eh?
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Gonzo Granzeau
Proof: Information IS Darwinian & Counterproof (Score:3)
The proof they are right is the fact that most Katz-haters are too stupid to figure out how to do this.
Re:Human Condition... (Score:2)
Since our conception of the "best mate" is largely visual, "best mates" tend to gravitate together, creating more superior organisms. On the other end of the spectrum, the inferior ghetto dwellers, birth defects, and linux users tend to come together, since nobody else will have them, and they are settling for the best they can get.
In between the two extremes, there is a pretty even chance that an "average" person will mate with a superior or inferior being, creating offspring that are slightly more superior or inferior than average. Of course, "love" is illogical, and occasionally you see a babe with a geek (q.v. KillCreek and Romero), but by and large the net effect over time will be that we will evolve into a race of Morlocks and Elois. This is a simple fact of evolution which can't be avoided, probably similar to when the neanderthals and homo sapiens split on the family tree.
If you want to see an example of the social ramifications of this sort of split, just go to Starbucks; the Morlocks make the coffee, and the Elois drink it. No matter how long and hard the Morlocks shlep coffee grinds and steamed milk, they are genetically predisposed toward the service industry. No matter how many times they pierce or dye, or how artistic a mien they portray, they can't fit in with the trendsetting web designers, poets, graphic artists, and amateur post-beatnik philosophers who consume the coffee they scalded their hands to produce.
Remember this the next time you patronize a Starbucks, and give the poor Morlock behind the counter a bite of your biscotti, or your marzipan cluster, and a sip of your caramel macchiato. They will appreciate it, considering that they and their offspring are destined to rise no higher in life than the splatter on the mud flap of the karmic wheel of Tarot.
Love,
Slashfucker
Re:Human Condition... (Score:2)
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Mindshare (Score:3)
In the case of media I believe the resource that runs out the most quickly is mindshare. There are only so many names that the public can remember. When you have a bigger audience it increases mindshare because not everyone needs to remember all the names, there can be some specialization and interest groups.
The important point, though, is that the public's mindshare capacity grows at a sublinear rate. This means that an audience twice as large can remember less than twice as many different names. The reason for this is that in order to grab mindshare a name does not need to reach a certain number of minds, it needs to reach a certain density, or percentage of the minds because names tend to fade away quite quickly unless you keep hearing them mentioned by your peers. The name needs to reach a certain percentage of your peer group in order to remain in your mind.
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information never had enemies (Score:2)
Let's take slashdot: a lot of articles are posted, I am now afraid of having lost something because I'm hungry of information. But then? What happens when I read an article about quantum computing? Am I going to teach it to someone?
It's just for me, for my own sake. How did I live when I wasn't reading
Browsing the Net today it's like being into a huge library and being able to access any kind of information, as long as this information is requested by many people (sortof on the lower shells). When you want to access something less common you have to go and dig or climb to find what you need (if you don't get tired before).
Have you ever tried to spend a whole day in a library just picking up books, reading few lines, and then putting them down? What have you gained at the end of the day? In most cases nothing at all, just a lot of ideas.
Sometimes few information you can remember, other times (if you're lucky) you'll have found something that really grasps you and something to do for the rest of your life.
My point here is: having a lot of information going around it's not a bad thing: statistically it's better for everybody, because virtually anybody can access data which had been impossible to reach just few years ago.
Statistically more and more people can find what they need, for their lives or whatever.
The b-side? We all know that not every piece information is good, nor it is accepted by everybody. Tell me if I'm wrong, but the more you surf the Net, the less you care about 'shocking' sites or information. You just avoid it with your mind. If something shocks you, you'd probably have been shocked by it anyway, no matter when or how.
Tons of information or just few ounces don't make the difference: it's never enough when you don't find what you want, it's too much when you don't *know* what you need.
Re:Self regulation (Score:2)
"Regulon" has the stench of "How do I get rid of the things I don't like." (CNN, weatherman, flamers, spammers, Web site designers, e-do gooders and nit-picking coders, pundits, zealots, smart-asses and grumps) The solution you point out is by far the most elegant and most simple, but Mr. Katz has the same attitude of an Anti-Porn crusader or some numbnut who wants to regulate music/media: "Lets get rid of it totally... trust me... its for your own good."
Information is relative (Score:2)
By the year 1000AD there was already more information available than any one person could ever hope to assimilate. Have you ever read (and understood, because there's more to information than just scanning it) the complete works of Plato? Probably not. But do you feel threatened by the mere presence of those unread words? Again probably not. So what's changed in modern times? How much really valuable information is there?
The other day I wanted to read up on the history of Britain before 1000AD. Rather than read a history book with all it's interpretations, I thought it would be cool to take a "clean room" approach and read the original documents that described Britain before 1000AD. Naturally I assumed they'd be out there on the Web by now. But guess what? Not only are they not on the Web, there isn't even a way to get a list of what manuscripts exist via the Web.
I just think that's kind of an interesting contrast, you feeling overwhelmed by junk information about the present whilst the most basic information about the past isn't even accessible electronically!
Moron. (Score:2)
Of course information has a predator -- it's called entropy. Which increases with time.
Duh.
Furthermore, ever head of signal-to-noise ratio? In the case of information, you can argue that the noise (JonKatz, "My Cat Fluffy" pages, banner ads, etc.) is what interferes with the signal (intelligent websites, etc.). To try and build an analogy of predator-prey ecology around signal-to-noise is bunk.
Predator-prey is something that applies to finite-but-expanding systems. In the case of information, you could argue that it is an expanding-but-infinite system. (This goes into the arguments put forth by Wittgenstein's Tractatus on language and language creation -- each linguistic construct being completely unique.) Anything you say, write, etc., has a basic uniqueness about it -- chances are, no one is ever going to write the same thing the exact same way. The basic theme may be similar, but the overall presentation will differ radically.
Where noise comes into the Web is when you have similar information about the same subject, or pages that draw you with the promise of certain information and then present something entirely different. (Like font sites with the phrase "sexy blondes" in their META tags.)
Jon == noise.
----------------------------------------
Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
No limiting factor? (Score:2)
I run a collection of fan sites for PC Games with a few other guys, and it costs a decent amount of money to send out 50 gigs of data per week. With that plus two servers, we're already talking over $1000 per month. Sure, this may sound cheap for as many people who get to enjoy the site, but since we can't charge for anything due to competition, you're lucky if you can make money with any amount of traffic. Just read any gaming news site these days, and you'll see the networks folding like lawn chairs, because banner ads just don't sell well enough. There are isloated cases where they work (this site probably does ok with them), but for the most part, our information is HEAVILY limited by distribution costs.
there are 3 regulons I can think of off hand (Score:2)
Too many fallacies (Score:4)
There are too many logical fallicies in this bit to count -- while it starts with a reasonable premise (there's too much information to be processed -- and it may be taking up too much time distracting the masses from more important matters) it really fades into babble quickly.
If you're going to discuss information and its transmission -- you might want to discuss it in terms of communication theory, not try to shoehorn the discussion into the boundaries of natural selection. Predators for information? Please.
Concerned parties may wish to read Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" which discusses the problems with the electronic media and the unchecked proliferation of electronic entertainment -- and what it is doing to public discourse. While I don't agree with every point that Postman makes, it's certainly a much more valid and lucid discussion than this piece of dribble.
It's counter-productive to assault Katz (or anyone else) for their faulty reasoning or pretentious posturing as an authority on these topics. The fact is they do need to be discussed. Even if the initial spark to the conversation was a bit weak, it's still a conversation worth having...
False analogy - media are not self-reproducing (Score:2)
Re:Information *IS* Darwinian (Score:2)
I'm not sure I totally agree. You are right in that the most popular ideas survive (at least temporarily) and the least popular ideas die off (or seem to), but rarely are the most popular ideas the strongest. Of course, if you apply that to information you come up with the concept of the good will survive, so perhaps you are right.
As an example: The boy band of the month is wildly popular, and held onto by all the little teeny boppers. Yet, when the next boy band comes along, most will forget the previous band. However, in time, the stuff that seems the most obscure today will probably come to the forefront while the boy-bands will fade into obscurity.
Do you think the classical composers that are popular and well-known now were in their lifetime? Some were, but many were poor, barely able to afford to live, but did what they did out of love and respect for their music. Those have stood the test of time. And I would bet that in time, many of the popular bands in rock-n-roll will fade away, but what will be left will be the best of the crop.
So, perhaps you are right. But the idea that popular and strong go hand in hand doesn't seem quite right. Popular now doesn't necissarily mean strong (when it comes to ideas). But I suppose that long-term popularity would mean strong. Hmm, interesting thoughts anyway.
Re:Egads... (Score:2)
That's a very good point. Media probably are, on the other hand, bound by the laws governing complex chaotic systems. An article along those lines would have been more interesting, but chaos theory is harder to understand than Darwinism, and every software engineer knows that the ideal tool for the job is the one that you personally know best, right? :)
Re:Human Condition... (Score:2)
Those that can't find a suitable mate are some of the most gene prolific people on the planet.
Then men that can't find women that they consider "suitable" typically end up sleeping with as many women as they can, leaving a trail of pregnancy behind them. The reason? Because the women they end up sleeping with are the female side of this equation. They cannot find a suitable mate, so they assume that it is in their best interests to use their sexuality to pull in as many men as possible.
I personally know three women and two men that live this way. They are never happy with relationships, yet they always end up creating a new life during those relationships, however short they are. Between these five individuals, there are thirteen new children, each of which are added to the gene pool, whether we like it or not.
There is no selection test for pregnancy. I'm not sure there should be, but people should learn to be more careful. It seems the stupider you are, the more likely you are to have children young and often. Somehow, that doesn't seem very Darwinian to me.
Re:Too many fallacies (Score:4)
In fact, I initially thought about flaming the fact that so many journalists have such a shallow understanding of the topics they report that they grossly misrepresent them. However, I realized that I didn't intend that criticism toward Mr. Katz in this case. He is reporting someone else's ideas for discussion. I have to give him credit to for presenting them rather objectively.
This issue needs to be discussed by people like us. If we aren't familiar with the half thought out ideas that are being foisted onto the general public, we won't be prepared for some of the idiotic legislation that they may spawn to address the imagined crises. Politicians are less informed than journalists. They don't have the luxury of limiting the scope of what they will consider to general subjects about which they know something. They deal with the issues that arise, real or imagined.
The Real Regulon (Score:2)
This may have been said already,but the regulon that preys on information is self interest. There is power in information. If you know something your competitor doesn't then you can exploit that to your advantage. This works in business, war, and any other number of fields. This is the reason behind patent and IP law, I spent the money to acquire this information, therefore I should have the right to its sole use for a given period of time.
Slashdot has this neohippie view of information, that information should be free even though somebody has to spend money to create it. I think this is probably the case because many members of slashdot aren't that somebody. If they are then its usually in a computer field where information and experiments are pretty cheap by physical world standards.
In short, knowledge is power and so will always be protected by someone in order to further their self interest.
Same bad analogy problem as memes (Score:2)
The fact is, there is plenty of competition out there. I don't find most television media interesting, so I shut it off. In this hokey framework, I am acting as my own regulon. If information is cleverly presented or entertaining or informative enough, I watch it : it is selected to survive. If not, it's toast.
Attempting to apply Darwinian theory to the use of remote controls by television viewers. Now there is a useless idea that isn't fit to survive...
Evolution versus Information? (Score:2)
Either are about the transmission AND interaction of information.
In evolution (and I'd like to note Darwin's theories are not the only ones), information interacts as well. Information in evolution is also not just from DNA - it's input from the environment in the form of learning, predation, etc. Living creatures alter their environment as well, producing more feedback.
Evolution produced us, a species almost free of its DNA, able to learn and adapt in amazing ways in very short times. The information age is a manifestation of human communications and adaption potential.
So there's no "outside" in evolution, no Regulon hanging over us externally - there is the interaction of information. The information age is merely an accelerated version.
It sounds to me like scientific materialists are trying to find a new God in the Regulon. Someone to thank for success, and someone that "we all need in our lives" for goodness and order.
Re:My Battle with Infinite Information (Score:2)
Well, I disagree to some extent with this statement. In an ideal world you'd be right, but we're not in an ideal world. When there is competition in information distribution, consumers will pick the best choice. However, the competition has considerably narrowed, and homogenized. This has a lensing affect, "controversial" or non-mainstream information doesn't get distributed that far. I congratulate you for actually having a life outside of media consumption, but I sincerely doubt that even you are immune to its affects. The media *define* how we think, our worldview, etc. I don't think it is that easy to escape. Just try to go to a Japanese restaurant and order wasabi without three gratingly obnoxious guys popping into your head and trying to sell you beer. Try humming a Beatles song for that matter without picturing an automobile or a flat screen tv. I'm sure you've been infected. The only cure is to go live in a small hole in the ground in siberia...but *damn* you'll still be able to get a hottub from Yahoo! there, right?
Interesting but not well enough thought out (Score:2)
Information consumes several resources. First and fore-most it consumes time. If "media" grew to consume 100% of time, then we'd have a recession and then a depression, and thus a death of society; course humans are more pro-active then a virus. We'd make laws, etc when enough people understood the danger.
Another resource consumed is disk space. You can't store every piece of information ever gathered by anyone. The ideal would be to have an MP3 recorder on and with you 24/7 so as to reference anything you've ever heard. Likewise with a video camera.. Beyond that, you could sense and record everything in the world 24/7 - thereby approaching omnipotence on a local scale. But the storage of this information would be impossible. Typically we record onto ferrite, and there's obviously a scarcity of metal in the world. Other's are using phosphors or plastics, but they too would be a scarcity.
So what happens in the "hard drive revolution"? Well, we use metal for quite a bit, and so to take metal away from one form of consumption produces competition and weighing of values. Look at DVD-ROM drives and cell phones.. They share a common component (don't know what, but I've read it often enough on slashdot). Because cell phones are 'exponentially growing', DVD-ROM's are prohibitively expensive. Manufacturers of course try to get around it by making them faster and thus justifying the added cost.
The danger again is the value storage above all things. So we lose the ability to use the materials for other purposes, and again humanity becomes pro-active and regulates. In reality, we have a diminishing marginal enjoyment. We're not going to record and playback information 24/7; we're going to be highly interested in other forms of recreation, or in rare cases; work.
As other's have pointed out, there is also the prospect of human memory.. Our brain is a finite storage system. To my understanding we "memorize" relations between experiences. We comprehend a sound, and relate it to some higher level concept (such as a vocabulary, or fear, etc). Most of the experiences we have are lost, and only the gist of what went on is retained - some more than others. Beyond that we'll have a fleeting interest in all the info out there. Some would love to have ready and repetitous access to espn channels 50 through 3,000. Other's would be interetsed in the discovery series 50 through 100, etc. So different personalities are going to filter that info uniquely.
Next is the issue of information predators. Well, first and foremost is the minimal resource requirements of information. Second is the reusibility of most of these resources (except time and energy consumption). You can only eat a plankton once, but you can record different MP3's to the same spot on a hard drive over time. The real predators are interest and time. You may be facinating today and thus over-write older material, but tomorrow you're old news; bye bye.. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Next comes Darwin with Natural Selection. Information that gets discarded quickly is selected for deletion; they'll have their moment.. Mutated from similar topics of the past. Copied web sites, re-reporting news on CNN, etc. Each time they're a tiny bit different, and they just might have found the right audience; maybe Bill Mawr had a comical spin to the same info that made a certain class suddenly interested in it. But ultimately, eveything has it's time to die. And information can die at a much more massive rate than life; just like an over-population of viri in a host, once the host dies. Entire hard drives can be wiped; entire broad-casts can be over, without ever recording them.
The saturation point is where we max out all possible bandwidth. Our entire visual perifera is filled with mini windows of streaming content. Any additional information beyond this immediately dies because of lack of additional audience. Even if they are recorded, there is little chance that every moment will be revisited until a new baby is born or some other content dies. But now we're back to postulate 1 above that we're spending 100% time in information consumption. So my argument is now concluded.
-Michael
"Fittest" does not mean "best" (Score:2)
And that judgment is only made in the context of a particular fitness landscape of a particular time. One should expect that the fitness of a particular species of information would change over time.
Viva non-linear systems.
beware the big bad media (Score:2)
User's will sort through the bad information. Word of mouth will come back into vogue with which news sources and media fonts to drink from. We're already doing it. I don't surf the web anymore. I only go to sites that friends recommend. Why bother?
The main problem right now is the search engines. Back in the glory days, search engines are how you ended up somewhere. Now it's all brand name media. As search technologies improve, so to will the ability to sort information to what's relevant to what you're looking for.
The web is about empowering the user/consumer, and that's what it will do to media. The Olympic Games got sucky ratings this year because media forgot about the end user. They suffered as a result of this by paying out millions and receiving a small ROI. They learned that the end user is really king, and that they can't always dictate the terms of their coverage to the consumer.
Re:Interesting but not well enough thought out (Score:2)
I hate when humans are compared to a virus because all a virus does is eat and reproduce. We have art and inspiration.. So long as we don't become mindless consumer zombies, we'll have an edge on exponentiality.
I think the original author's point was that was the danger. But myself and my children will not be plagued with this; not because I'll keep the TV and internet off, but because I'll excite them with the many physical wonders of the world as my father did with me.
-Michael
what the hell is this? (Score:2)
At the risk of legitimizing this ridiculous idea, I'll bite. Information and media absolutely have predators, they are called "customers". If their weren't "predators" how come these media corporations compete and fight so damn hard? Money is the sword by which these media producers live and die. The idea they will proliferate ad nauseum is absurd.
Jon Katz asks for input from physicists and biologists. I am an ex-physicist and current Electrical Engineer and my wife is a neuroscientist. My input is the question is wrong. There is no Regulon. It is an exceedingly lame theory put forth by an idiot who calls himself a "futurist". By the way, the word "futurist" is a pretty good idiot detector.
The field of information theory is a hard science concerned with the ability to code, store, and transmit information between two points in an optimally efficient manner. This crap has nothing to do with information theory, it is just a loser beating off to a DVD of "The Matrix".
If you're reading this Jon, let me say I enjoy some of the things you post and I've actually read one of your books. BUT, I think you focus way too much on this kind of useless, meaningless, pompous B.S. Just saying things are so doesn't make them so.
YOU are the Regulon (Score:2)
Sure we do. It's called the "off button". Watch the last 10 minutes of The Osterman Weekend or any 10 minutes of Max Headroom.
> Look at media coverage of sensational stories -- like the death of Princess Di, the O.J. Simpson trial, the Monica Lewinsky mess or the recent electoral nightmare.
One of these things is not like the other. One of these things does not belong.
> In the absence of a Regulon, information could proliferate to the point that it overwhelms us.
The key thing about the 'net is that you are the Regulon.
Di entered my mental killfile the minute her brains entered the cement post. She serves only as a reminder that Darwin (funny you should mention him) weeds out the stupid from the gene pool without regard to one's heritage. Get in a car with a drunk driver, get outa the gene pool. The months of hysteria afterwards were just filler to sell ads.
OJ entered my mental killfile the minute he decided not to spray his brains all over his white Bronco. No more gore, not interested. The rest was just filler to sell ad space.
Lewinsky? The minute Starr decided "it's about sex", figuring he'd be able to piss off enough Republicans in Congress to impeach and convict, rather than "it's about the real crimes", it was over. The public might have been able to care about the other crimes, but nobody gives a wet slap about sex today. Starr failed to realize that the age when sex mattered is long gone. The congresscritters read the polls, and knew damn well the voters didn't care, and voted accordingly. Everything from Al Gore lying to defend Bill in January to the debate over impeachment-versus-censure was just filler between the commercials. (But seeing Bubba choke up on the cigar question was fun ;-)
The election mess was amusing to watch - but you only had to read one or two stories a day. What court's ruling, whether it's stacked with Democrats or Republicans, and when it rules. It was only worth watching because the answer would have affected the financial markets, who had bet heavily on a Bush victory - every time a pro-Gore ruling came out, holders of put options made a bundle as the market dropped 100 points in the next minute or two.
Basically, there was a buck to be made on the news conferences in the presidential mess, and the rest was just filler.
That was my Regulon. Cut down OJ to an hour of watching a Bronco, Di to 15 minutes of laughter, Lewinsky to half an hour reading the Starr report and 5 minutes giggling at Bubba on the cigar issue, and the election fiasco to an hour or two a day and some nice trading profits.
What was wrong with your Regulon?
Re:Human Condition... (Score:2)
Although this is not an uncommon thought to have about natural selection and humans it is not true, just ask any biologist or evolutionary psychologist. In a basic biology class one learns that if a organism is "unfit" for its environment then it fails to reproduce before it dies thereby removing it from the gene-pool. Unfortunately the only context that are ever used are ones dealing with strength, speed, camoflauge (sp?), and other things that deal with a somewhat "natural" surrounding.
Humans are evolving, the important thing to understand is what our environment actually IS! We are not evolving to survive in the jungle, forrest, desert, or plains, instead we are adapting to an artifically created environment, but more importantly we are evolving to survive within our culture. You say that we have no method to weed out the "weak", but what classifies "weak" in our world?
There is a good book, which I haven't finished yet, called Children of Prometheus by Christopher Wills. He sites some very good research about the subject, and, from what I have read, does a very good job with analysis.
Help? I'll give you help. (Score:2)
Well, I have degrees in chemistry and biochemistry, and have taken (and passed) a number of graduate-level molecular biology courses. I hope that's close-enough for you.
As a quasi-biologist, here's my advice on the subject: Don't try to apply biological principles to non-biological systems. It doesn't work.
What if I tried to apply computer science principles to biological systems? Sure, to the person who is familiar with neither computer science nor molecular biology, genetically engineering bacteria to perform a desired function may seem like "programming" the bacteria. But the two are so fundamentally different that I would at best end up wasting my time if I tried to apply comp. sci principles in order to get bacteria to do what I wanted them to do. Similarly, if you try to apply biological principles to information, you end up with junk, which is what this Katz article is.
So then what is bandwidth? (Score:2)
Re:Somewhere in the world... (Score:2)
Does this mean it is destined to be destroyed, as Nostradamus predicted? :)
I appologize for posting while contributing nothing to the discussion, but that comment just jumped out at me. The lack of doom-and-gloom-end-of-the-world-y2k/y2k1-predictio ns that I have grown used to hearing over and over for the last ten years has obviously gotten to me. :)
Re:There is a predator (Score:2)
Because it hasn't slowed yet doesn't mean it won't eventually slow down. In fact, I think that things have slowed some. Witness how difficult it is to get venture capital for new web companies now.
Cheers,
Brian
music as information (Score:2)
/. pro-censorship? (Score:2)
Is there too much information? Maybe, so what? I'll just find people/organizations I trust, and use them as filters. I'll periodically check up on them to make sure they're honest, and if they're not, I'll go somewhere else.
As for the Omega Point (also known as the Singularity), that's just a model, which may very well not be valid at that point (most models aren't valid when they predict a spike to infinity of some real quantity). Even if it is, why are we afraid of it? It could be a wonderful next step in the evolution of intelligence on this planet.
We DO Have Natural Selection (Score:2)
Respect for and preservation of the physically and/or mentally handicapped at some cost to society is a side-effect of a society that has grown to sufficiently successful complexity that it can afford to value the well-being of even the weakest of its citizenry. This behaviour is every bit as 'natural' as the scavenger who gets more food than the other who is wounded or diseased.
The lines of cause, effect, reward and such are much more difficult to trace in a complex society. That does NOT mean that the lines do not exist.
Re:Self regulation (Score:2)
Some people aren't satisfied with solving their own problems, and letting other people control their own lives. They believe themselves to be 1337 in some sort of politcial/philosophical sense, and appoint themselves guardians of the common good. They then seek to impose controls on what others can say, do, hear, and see. They often are incapable of solving even their own problems, so they imagine that others must be similarly incapable, and in need of "protection". Jon Katz is such a person.
I don't think I agree with the basic premises... (Score:2)
Those all assume that information follows some basic rules of biology;
That information has a survival instinct. This survival instinct would force it to consume as much as it needed to reproduce, and reproduce as often as it is wont to do.
Information has no survival instinct. It is itself a consumable with very little cost. A better analogy to information is money; the value of the information is much higher than the value of the basic structure, bits or whatnot, that describe the information. In money, the denomination is higher value than that of the paper itself. That, and the potential for near limitless reproduction.
What limits money? Real value. Money needs to be assigned to something, like a car, or an apple, or a service, before it can be worth something. It is only useful insofar as it can be used. Information is similar. It's limiting factor should be the value that information is associated with it, whether it be an emotional state, a memory, a belief, or a set of instructions.
Media *only* replicates at exponential rates because there is value, and in a networked world, it will replicate as often as it's value will allow it.
The worth of a song, an image, a movie, a book, etc, determines how many copies are sold, spread, or shared. Rather than tagging it with a denomination (all CDs are about $10 in the US, or DVDs are $30, PSX games are $40, etc) the value is expressed in units produced; 1 million $10 CDs, 4 million $30 DVDs, or 5 million $40 PSX discs.
If one really wants to force an analogy to evolution, the value of the movie Unbreakable, to society, as a message about hope, or self worth, or strength, or whatever analysis you want to assign, is determined by the number of copies of the DVD, VHS, and VCDs that exist. A half million years from now, physical processes kick in, and the chance that any copy of it exists, statistically, is determined by how many copies of it exist today, in a strange quantum/statistical/radioactive half-life kind of way.
Today, how many copies of how many Greek tragedies exist? How about 1000 years from now? How many copies of the Matrix, or Unbreakable, or Crouching Tiger, exist?
Ah, if someone else wants to pursue a better analogy, information can be deconstructed to something like DNA, which by itself is fairly pointless, but within the construct of a self replicating organism, starts to become valuable, as it helps determine the survival and growth potential of the organism.
Likewise, media, information, and such are like DNA, and the value is more analogous to how well the instructions, morals, and stories help the society and culture to grow, adapt, survive, and evolve!
Say, the Anarchist's Cookbook, as a negative example!
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
To talk about regulons... (Score:2)
Movies, stories, news, music, etc, help to shape, teach, grow, and limit our cultures, and the value of good information is that it is absorbed by and propogated through our culture, through space *and* time. There is no regulon in this case, in the sense of a predator, but obsolescence, time, and apathy work on the information to destroy it.
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Information as DNA (Score:2)
So websites can be 'selected' against, genres of music, or movies; but individual CDs, movies, or stories themselves cannot be.
There is an interesting analogy I thought of, in which information == DNA, and a culture, a person, or a society is the organism that uses said information. Instead of survival based on physical traits, it is survival based on behavioral traits.
The story of Skywalker, or the Mau'dib, or of Cloud Strife, affects the people who partake, and affects their behavior, and thus their chances at success, happiness, and reproduction.
But the information itself does not change, excepting in the concept of sequels, variations, etc, and that's more mutation in the fact that as an author takes in a story, his interpretations change the story subtly as he reproduces it and retransmits it.
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Sounds good! (Score:2)
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
You're treating information as alive! (Score:2)
They aren't predators, in the sense that they grow and thrive off the death of information!
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
The regulon is "copying" (Score:2)
The earliest such as stone engravings last the
longest, but even their languages are forgetton.
Only the good stuff preserved by copying and
translation (and much lost too). Only the
important books have been copied, since most of
the originals have been lost.
Modern media is more transient. Magnetic storage
lasts a decade, assuming its "language" or
encoding protocol lasts even that long. Web media
and video are even more transient. Again
preservation by copying is what lasts.
Not a 'predator' (Score:2)
Interest and apathy are good regulators, but aren't in the same class as regulons, I don't think.
Information can spread more easily, but don't reproduce in the same way in which regulons, prey, and predators, are associated.
A moral, however, for example, can be forced into the concept. Take Wes Craven, who mutates some common morals into his horror movies. It is the person who consumes ideas, and then reproduces it in a modern format for others to consume; maybe later, some of those people will be inspired by Wes Craven, and become an author of horror stories, etc.
The ideas themselves aren't like prey or predators, but are like DNA, and shape or form the people who incorporate the stories into themselves, and shape the ideas or stories that these people later spit back out for the culture to share and consume.
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Re:Information is subject to entropy (Score:2)
Entropy is the universe's method for keeping track that interactions happen - no, it'd probably
be better said that it's a mathematical construction with no real physical basis. Truly, if you think about entropy on a purely physical basis, it would kindof seem like magic from a macroscopic point of view - from a microscopic point of view, though, it's obvious - of course you can't revert to a lower entropy state, because something *happened* to cause that entropy state, and that 'something' can't just be forgotten. But what if that 'something' could be forgotten - i.e., it's reversible, with no energy needed? Then the process was adiabatic- no entropy change - and no information gained.
But, in any case, to your point - I don't believe the problem Katz was talking about was unwanted information - but necessary information - i.e., survival information. Our brains are remarkably good at filtering out unnecessary information from our senses - however, people don't seem to be very effective at filtering out useless directed information. We learn naturally to ignore
constant murmur around a room. We don't seem to learn to ignore constant "Horrific shooting maims 3 in supermarket slaying" on the local news - people seem to grab on stories that have been hyped and overdone, leading to a false sense of the progression of the world - i.e., 'schools are becoming increasingly more violent' when evidence shows otherwise.
I don't think that entropy is information's Regulon- I think cynicism is. Eventually, when kids grow up in a hyped up society, we won't believe it anymore. Eventually, important information will find a way to breach the cynicism, or it is ignored and filed away.
Re:Human Condition... (Score:2)
So, does that mean that humanity will eventually be composed a bunch of drooling idiots that are capable only of reproduction and little else (maybe the few smart ones left will make machines to take care of the 'necissities of life')? Or will there be a disease (as you've implied slighty) to sort of 'clean things up'?
Conversations like this usually disturb too many people as they start delving into possible massive deaths in the 'clean up' of humanity. But, it is possible that there will be these sorts of problems as we cram more humanity into smaller areas. Anybody ever worked with livestock? Whether it's fish in aquariums or cows in a stock yard, if you put too much biomass into too small an area strange things start happening. Whether it is a break down in the immune systems of the individuals involved, or the development of diseases within the population that are easily spread (because of population density) or a combination is usually unknown (but not always). But with large cities growing upward and filling with people I would think at some point we would run into some disease or other problem that is far beyond the ability of modern medicine to combat. I hope I'm wrong, but it's an interesting idea.
Oh, and for the nit-picking people, I'm not saying that humans are just livestock, just pointing out that we are all part of the same environment. And basically, we are all made up of the same stuff. Organic life-forms are organic life-forms. We may have bigger brains, but we are still the same sort of creatures.
Regulon... (Score:2)
"Approaching Regulon Five, captain...."
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So, first there was... (Score:2)
Look, information is fundamentally different from material systems: I can make perfect duplicates at will of information.
Applying concepts of Darwinian selection to a theoretical population of memes? Well, considering the nature of memes, wouldn't that make US the selection criteria? "I don't like that, so I'll ignore it." And eventually, due to bit rot, it goes away.
But it's BOGUS. At it's very core. I just don't think we've reached the saturation point yet with all of our various forms of media. And reaching saturation is okay, too.
There is no threat from this. I LIKE having more sources of information, because it gives me more choices. "But the quality is decreasing!" And it will continue to do so. But the greater number of information choices does mean, long term, that there are a greater number of above-average quality sources than there was before. Yes, I'll have to go diggging through a greater mountain of shit to find them.
Whee! (Score:3)
That said- why did Katz, who is familiar with television, miss this potentially embarrassing detail?
There's your 'regulon', right there.
Not only that, I can _demonstrate_ the Regulon. Watch closely:
_Effusive_ apologies for carrying on like that, but notice what just happened? A whole bunch of people totally ignored the hype. Just as a whole bunch of people now ignore politics and won't vote, etc. When you are drowning in information you really lose interest in selecting among it, and you begin to reject _all_ of it simply because too much of it is unsuitable or inappropriate...
I post to a musician web board, and a common topic has been, "Ack, get a load of these clowns email spamming all of us to get downloaded!" This gets great contempt. Well, just recently everyone got spammed by a _new_ twist- a person sending 'a fan has sent you an email!' mail, who expressed great appreciation, said they downloaded all your songs and if you check it turns out they _did_, and asks only, "Will you put me on your band's mailing list so I can be informed when new material comes out?"
The consensus was: it was a very determined attempt to harvest addresses- which would then be spammed to hell. Many people got this treatment, and some of them had bought in to similar approaches and ended up getting spammed like mad from bands they had not even heard of.
So at this point in this musician community, the 'fan has sent you an email' mechanism (operated from a web page) has become utterly worthless because there is no perceptible difference between a genuine fan and attempts to harvest emails. You can't even go by 'does the mail display someone else's URL or is it just a letter' because it can be seemingly a totally sincere letter and _still_ be a baited hook!
That situation would seemingly be immune to 'regulons' and yet in practice the mechanism can end up ignored due to abuses.
I've said before that we're looking at an economy of _attention_, and this is precisely the regulating factor. Much advertising, not to mention web advertising, is useless- some actually un-sells products by being too annoying (this can be measured...) and the more advertising screams for attention the less it's noticed.
Know who Victor Kiam is? You've probably seen his face. People recognise him on the street because he is the guy who 'liked the shaver so much, he bought the company'. He sells electric razors in those advertisements.
Quick- what is the brand name of razor he's selling? People recognise this guy's face on the street and remember the 'I bought the company' tagline. When he then asks them what is the name of the company, more than half of the people don't know.
Quick, what sport is Michael Jordan known for? You'll find many people recognise the name but haven't a clue what the guy does.
Regulon, meet Katz. Katz, meet Regulon. ...but you already know each other, don't you? Because Regulon has been causing people to tune _you_ out, Katz, for years. Just as it does to _everybody_.
I could use some help from a glossary. (Score:2)
If you can't say it in plain english then you really don't know what you are talking about.
I learned this from my parents. The authors of over 50 books and uncounted hundreds of magazine articles. (They also taught professional writing at the UW-Madison extension for many years.)
We're all in this together... (Score:2)
1262 ktz
It seems you're not doing your part to stem the tide, Jon. Shame shame.
--
There is no K5 [kuro5hin.org] cabal.
Re:Somewhere in the world... (Score:2)
Does this mean it is destined to be destroyed, as Nostradamus predicted?
I've often wondered, the biblical Book of Revelations talks of a beast that will rise out of the masses and know everything about everyone and it would be controled by the antiChrist. Does the beast == wireless internet?